The Ukrainian National Police said on Friday that they had arrested a hacker in the southern city of Mykolaiv in connection with a sophisticated scheme to hijack cloud computers to mine cryptocurrencies, a ploy known as “cryptojacking.”
Since investigative journalists revealed 10 months ago that Lithuanian railways had been used to move Russian and Belarusian fertilizers into the European Union despite sanctions, authorities in Vilnius have tightened checks, rejecting requests to let tens of thousands of wagons pass through the country to or from Russia and Belarus.
As part of the ongoing suppression of media freedom in Belarus, a court in Minsk opened the trial of freelance journalist Alyaksandr Zyankou on Friday. He has been charged with participating in an extremist formation for covering anti-government protests in 2020.
The Germany-based international software company SAP will pay over US$220 million to settle corruption accusations by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), who claim it paid bribes to government officials in South Africa and Indonesia in exchange for government contracts.
Another defendant in the US$250 million Feeding Our Future fraud scheme pleaded guilty Wednesday, bringing the total to 17 who have confessed to stealing millions from a U.S. federal program designed to feed needy children in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Iraqi authorities have deployed special forces to increase security at Baghdad International Airport. The move follows OCCRP’s December investigation that revealed the company contracted to secure the airport had no previous experience, and many of its staff claimed their salaries were not paid for several months.
The Federal Police of Brazil arrested a person suspected of laundering large amounts of money from drug trafficking and other crimes through crypto assets. The illegal business saw more than US$2.6 billion flow through the accounts of shell companies the suspect controlled.
Ecuador descended further into violence after President Daniel Noboa introduced a state of emergency following the disappearance of two imprisoned leaders of the country’s most prominent gangs, prison riots and explosions in several cities.
Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny could only find humor in appearing on Wednesday before a familiar judge who uphold the court’s previous decision for him to remain in solitary confinement in a remote Arctic prison.
Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Monday declared lifetime bans on politicians contesting elections unconstitutional, clearing the last obstacle on former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s path to running for the post for the fourth time.